Dreams May Come Parenthesis Remix
by Mad Maudlin
Summary: life's not a paragraph and death i think is no parenthesis


Dreams May Come

(the parenthesis remix)

by Mad Maudlin

_since feeling is first_

_who pays any attention_

_to the syntax of things_

_will never wholly kiss you;_

_wholly to be a fool_

_while Spring is in the world_

_my blood approves,_

_and kisses are a far better fate_

_than wisdom_

_lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry_

—_the best gesture of my brain is less than_

_your eyelids' flutter which says_

_we are for eachother: then_

_laugh, leaning back in my arms_

_for life's not a paragraph_

_And death i think is no parenthesis_

—_E. E. Cummings_

pull

no

pushpull

no

pull (no)

pullSqueezepull

push

no

pushpushPUSHsqueezePull

_squeeeeeeeze_

OH.

Coldloudbright heavytightslow moving, moving, loud—voice. Pulling and pushing and hard (edge?) and coarse (wood!) and sobright and socold and tight (skin...), moving, muscle and blood pull and push and weight. Weight and dimension, air and blood, coarse and cold and sudden soft-green-dust—carpet. Too bright. Too loud. Too cold. A shrill voice, a creak, pressure toohard toowarm toosoft—moving, muscle and bone. Something hard. Foot. Moving (kicking). A _shin._

Footsteps and slamming and the ground shakes, the floor shakes, the wood unbearably coarse and the carpet unbearably soft. Flesh and bone, moving, though the too-bright and the too-loud (rush, rush, what's that unending noise?) and so very cold, and the colors. Brown and green and pink and gray and black. (Black...) and textures, smooth-soft-cool and rough-warm-dry and, and. Reaching. This is a chair. This is a desk. This is a hand. This is a him.

_He_ is a him.

It's a start.

Hands and legs and skin and lungs that draw breath, blood that rushes through vessels with exquisite speed. A wonder he doesn't burn himself up from the friction. His flesh (his!) is hot, hot, hot, but the room is cold, cold like he's never felt before. Felt. Before.

There was a before.

Nothing was before.

No—not nothing. Something. But it wasn't like this, so cold and loud with coarse wood and skin that stretches and scrapes, with near-blinding lights (candles?), with deafening noise, with the stink of smoke and chalk and breath and _life_—

Deep breaths. Air rushes in shocking-cold through lips and teeth and throat, air rushes out blister-hot from the nose. Breathing. There was no breathing Before, there was no aching skin or burning eyes. Before is black hair and green eyes and a warm embrace, only—no. Not like this. Before was joy and peace and warmth that didn't come from the friction in his veins (he didn't have any).

He squints, looks around. Fat oozy candles fill the room with light and a waxy subsmell that tickles and itches his nose. A brilliant white ring is chalked on the floorboards, except where he's smudged it crawling through—he wipes the chalk from his knees, dry but grease-slick under his fingers. Loose dirt in the circle, and a brazier—that's the main stench, incense, still leaking from the flaring coals. The itch on his skin is dirt and cold and powerful magic. He's not sure which one is the most oppressive.

He recognizes walls, furniture, touching everything he sees and watching everywhere he touches, like a blind man granted sight. A dresser, now. He squints at the sparks reflected by the smooth brass handles and braves their cold to pull himself up, onto his knees. Small objects on top, strange textures, the smell of dust and alcohol and faint flowers—he feels over bottles and brushes he cannot identify, a handkerchief edged in a confusion of lace, peering into shadows—

(A gaunt horror, pale and haggard and staring—)

He flings himself away and scrambles back, muscle and nerve and bone moving in tandem, skin stretching and scratching and tearing back where he scuffs himself on the floor. Short beats of waiting, counting the double-thumps of his frantic heart and feeling the blood strain its banks in his ears. A few deep cold breaths, and then he approaches the dresser again, crawling, peeking over the edge eversocarefully—reaching out to touch the pale-eyed wraith staring back and hitting _glass—_

Mirror. Of course.

(Was it apt he'd seen Inferi that looked better?)

The door moves, screeching and pounding, sending a sweep of air through the room that makes his skin draw painfully tight. A woman's head pokes into the room, a woman who looks (but she can't be) familiar (too old) with wide eyes that flame with reflected candlelight. "Sirius?" she asks with a shrill-thundering quaver in her voice, and his hands fly to his ears for protection as he shrinks behind the dresser. Too much. Much too much.

She backs out, slowly, shuts the door with a boom and there is silence again except for that low maddening background rush. Sirius crawls to the bed. The blanket is soft but with a loose rasp to it, old and comfy, yielding in a way that speaks of warmth. He finds clothes on the bed, a thin cotton shirt, faded corduroys that rasp on his skin when he touches them. There's a book near the pillow. Open. He braves the crackle of the leaf-sharp yellow paper to flip it over (a balance of weight and nerves, muscle and bone) and look at the title, embossed on dark leather unbearably smooth with gold leaf that burns almost as bad as the candle:

_Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Necromancy but are Legally Prohibited from Finding Out_ by G. J. Chthonus

That explains a lot. (Maybe too much.)

-/--/--/-

He puts on the clothes (itchy-tight and heavy on his skin) and he reads the book. He doesn't understand most of it except for the diagram of a pile of grave dirt in a chalk circle, a circle that on inspection resembles the one on the floor of this room, and he thinks he understands what she did but not how it worked, how he is here in the loud, cold, bright now. He touches himself, tracing his ribs and hipbones, the stark tattoos that adorn both arms, the neat round scar over his heart. Flesh and blood and bone, not just earth and magic—but he doesn't understand it, isn't sure he wants do.

He lays down on the bed but doesn't sleep. The cold is too intense, the blankets too rough to curl under, the candles too bright and too hot to get close enough to blow out. The novelty of breathing is too strong, the steady inrush of cold air, the outflow of heat, the irresistible compulsion of a yawn. He's not sure what would happen if he did sleep, if his mind floated off from this frail new body and couldn't quite find its way back, (if he dreamed). So he investigates his breathing and the texture of the blanket, and he begins to think his senses might be acclimating.

A band of light the color of old steel stretches across the ceiling when he hears movement again in the house (flat?), footsteps and a voice too faint to discern. The woman sticks her head into the room again, looking disheveled and panicky. "Sirius?" she says again with the same suppressed shrill. "Are you okay?"

He doesn't move—doesn't close his eyes but doesn't acknowledge her. He's not sure his mind is sorted enough to have a conversation right now.

"Sirius, can you heard me?"

Sirius. Yeah. He knows that bloke.

"Do you know who I am?"

Went to Azkaban. Got himself killed by his cousin.

(The woman bites her lip and stares at him.)

He touches the black prison tattoos and the dark, puckered scar again.

(She quietly backs out of the room again.)

He _remembers._

-/--/--/-

The streak on the ceiling is the color of pewter and Sirius is remembering, slow and clumsy. Memories are weak and insubstantial things, like dreams, compared to this world crisp firm edges, and he isn't certain he can trust them (too much like Before). But he has to sort things out—untangle the thousand frayed threads that dangle off the edge of his (previous) life and weave them back together.

A bloodred curse.

A filmy veil.

(a pleasant day out with his mates, as thin as mist)

It's hard to make the strands connect again, and he's never quite sure if they even go together. The woman in the flat, the woman who talks to him—she _looks_ like Hermione Granger. He knows that. But he can't feel it, can't connect the girl in his mind to the woman he's seen except by facial resemblance. He doesn't know where or when he is, has no frame of reference except for this shadowy room and the alleged Hermione, who seems so scared of him.

(There are two three people he would like to see, the golden threads he's steered by, but one of them is gone for good and he cannot think of the other two right now. It hurts in a way that the lights and the sounds cannot.)

There's movement in the house-flat-place then, voices again. Sirius finds the strength to stand (and time to marvel at the willful response of muscle and bone, so heavy and real, and starting to fit) and walk to the door, wondering if his voice will work as well as his limbs or only as well as his brain.

He opens the door (wrist as smooth as the lock) while the woman who is probably Hermione is talking: "...No, no, I didn't tell him I was getting you. I don't want to shock him any more than I already have."

A man's voice, hoarse and low, murmurs, "Too late."

The corridor is a riot of lights and sounds and new shapes and colors, brighter and louder and _more_ than the bedroom, but he braces himself, wills himself to stand it. Sirius looks down the bright hallway at the figures in the foyer—Hermione with a drippy woolen muffler, a man with graying hair and a patched and shabby cloak looking at him, a man with brown eyes and a lined face _looking_ at him—

"Moony?" Sirius says, and his own dry voice jars him, his own _want,_ the core-deep shock at seeing a face (so _old) _that he knows, not just knows but _believes_ in.

Remus (Remus, _Remus) _holds out a hand still encased in a fraying glove, never breaking eye contact. "It's all right," he says awkwardly after a heartbeat or two. "I'm here."

And it's real. Sirius launches himself at Remus (Remus!) and _clings, _because this is familiar and this is a memory and this is something from Before. Remus is Before and Remus is Then and Remus is Now, an unbroken thread that Sirius could confidently grasp. "Get me out of here," Sirius whispers, and rubs his face into the bescarfed neck, the soft fleece and a bit of tender skin.

Remus's arms automatically hold him, brace him, not in the way Sirius remembers (imaged) from Before, but good enough for now. _Now_. Remus is very Now: familiar as memory, but he smells day-old and his jaw is stubbled and his jumper is worn very thin at the elbows. He's as warm and solid as Sirius himself and that's a kind of comfort on its own.

Remus and Hermione speak softly over Sirius's shoulder, and Sirius pays more attention to the sliding timbre of sounds and the adam's-apple buzz by his ear than the words, at least until he hears Hermione say "...tell Harry?"

"Harry?" Sirius lets go of Remus and looks around for a moment, but no, Harry isn't there. And Sirius is happy about that in a selfish little way, because he doesn't think he can handle Harry right now, doesn't know what he'd say, doesn't want to be seen like this (so new). He looks at Hermione and Remus, questioning.

"Let's wait a couple days," Remus says firmly and calmly. The crack in his composure has sealed over tightly and he's calm again, the brisk professor. "Until we're sure that everything is...all right."

_Sure that I'm sane?_ Sirius thinks. _Sure that I'm the same?_ He isn't willing to swear to either one at the moment himself.

"All right," Hermione says, sounding oddly relieved at the prospect. "Of course. I meant it to be a surprise anyway..." She shakes her head and looks at them closely. "Er, you probably shouldn't Apparate back, I don't want him to splinch himself. A Portkey, perhaps?"

Travelling. Sirius missed the part where Remus said where they are going, but suddenly leaving the building sounds grand. He glances at the window and for the first time connects the swirling, blotting smears of color and light than crawl across the glass with the low-frequency hiss that fills the space between the words. "Is it raining?" he asks.

"Dreadfully," Remus says, just a bit uncertainly, as if he's not certain what Sirius might do next. (That's okay because Sirius isn't either.)

Sirius crosses to that window and touches the chilly glass, watching the drops of water bloom and flow away behind his fingers. The street beyond is gray and indistinct and suddenly he wants to be out there, _out,_ in the wide world of sounds and smells and shocking motion, where there are answers. "I want to walk," he says. "If it isn't far."

"Not far at all," Remus says.

"Do you feel strong enough for that?" Hermione asks anxiously, twisting her muffler between her hands. "You don't want to wear yourself out. And what if you're seen?"

Seen? He doesn't care about being seen anymore. He wants to _see._ "Let's go, Remus," he says, and feels a tingle of magic as he walks out the front door (a priviledge unknown since Azkaban).

Hermione's flat is in a converted townhouse, he finds, and he runs his hands over the waxed banisters as he trots down the central stairs, feeling every groove and divot in the smooth sticky coat. It occurs to him that he is barefoot, that a thin shirt and trousers too short in the ankle will not protect him when Remus and Hermione were wearing mufflers and jumpers and cloaks. But then he is out the front door and down the front steps, feet slapping on the cold wet concrete, and the air is damp and clean and the only thing separating him from the sky.

It's bright and loud and cold, yes, and he breathes in wet air, but it's better, not as bad as when he first woke (rose) up. Sirius turns his face up and lets the rain come down, every drop like a tiny explosion on his skin. He lets it run into his mouth and listens to the papatatitpipip on the downspouts and it's _glorious._

And he feels _alive._

He breathes deep the smells of the rain, and suddenly remembers a way around shoes. For a moment he isn't certain it will still work—if the magic has come back the same way as the flesh and blood and bone. He bites his lip and crosses his eyes and concentrates. He _wants—_

And then the world is black and white and warm and rich, and the ground is so much closer, and he is Padfoot again. The rain feels different on fur, dull impacts, and sorting out limbs and senses is suddenly hard all over again—not so cold now, but the smells are almost overwhelming, and there are so _many._ Rain washes odors away in the country, rinses the air clean, but in the city it just picks up all the smog and dust and chemicals and life and concentrates it in the gutters and potholes. He shakes his head a few times until the traffic noise recedes, listens with wonder to music and voices leaking from the buildings and the little chirrups of the sheltering birds.

Remus comes out and looks at him, smiling with a little crease between his eyebrows. "Apparently you're feeling well," he says.

Padfoot says _rarf!_

"Let's go home."

Home—there is a word—Sirius can think of houses, mansions and castles, halls full of people and rooms full of anger and a tiny flat full of raucous laddish affection—he doesn't remember a home. But Remus has pulled his hood up and huddled under a ragged black umbrella, and so Sirius follows, across the rain-rushing streets.

It isn't a long walk, but there's so much to _smell_, and Padfoot can't help himself stopping to inhale the faint odors clinging to a cracked stone step or the fumes off a rainbow-skinned puddle. At one moment he thinks he's lost Remus (after Remus already lost him) when he looks up from a greasy piece of newsprint and can't find the patched cloak, can't smell the old tweed and wolf on the wet breeze. Panic almost seizes him, because it is wet and loud and open here in the world, and without Remus he could only go back to Hermione's, and what is he supposed to do with no anchoring thread —? But Remus has only stepped into an off-license, and he emerges again with a bag that Sirius likes the smells of very much. (Almost as much as he likes the smell of Moony.)

Remus lets him into a smaller, older block of flats not far from Hermione's at all; it feels and smells like a very Remus place, quiet and alert and gently used. Sirius is dignified enough to shake off in the corridor before Remus lets him inside, and transforms back to watch Remus unbundle: Remus, he and Remus together again, (he _alive_ again,) with liquor and a day ahead like they've never been separated.

(They haven't really. There was Before. But Remus didn't smell like sweat and aftershave Before, didn't have scars on his hands or the shocking little lines around his eyes.)

"I could use a drink," Remus says, slinging a wet scarf onto a peg on the wall. "You?"

"Please." Sirius watches Remus juggle the bag from the off-license and his wet cloak, the steady mundane balancing act it involves. Sirius is back (from beyond the grave) and they are going to have a drink, yes; but something is not quite right here, something rings false. "You're being frighteningly calm about all this," he says tentatively.

"I could say that you're being frighteningly cheerful," Remus says with the slightest hint of a tease, "but I'm much too polite." Sirius watches Remus go into the kitchen and follows him after a moment. He's not sure he's all that cheerful and he wonders if Remus is really all that calm; he wonders what he's missing here, what details he's forgotten, because something's still not right here but he can't put his finger on why. Remus has always been the one with the poker face, after all.

"So you don't know how to handle it either?" he asks, just as lightly.

"I have no idea," Remus says. "I'm trying not to think too hard about it." He pours two glasses—the bottle turns out to be a reasonably-priced brandy, pleasant amber and catching the light in entrancing ways—and passes one to Sirius with a ghost of a smile. "It's all quite improbable."

"I know that. I'm the one who was dead, after all." Banter is good, banter is familiar; it helps him ignore that touch of ill-ease. He sips the drink and wobbles for a moment under the taste, the astringent burn that fills his mouth and works down his throat to start a faint slow burn in his belly; one more thing he hasn't remembered, one more thread to tie his old and new(born) self together. "Could we sit? In the lounge? With the bottle?"

"I don't see why not."

The lounge chairs are comfy, with buttock-shaped divots in the cushions and tasteful upholstery that absorbs Sirius' attention for several minutes in a riot of color and texture. It is so engaging, in fact, that he crawls onto the floor to get a better look at it and never quite finds his way up again; Remus watches him bemusedly for a moment, then lowers himself to the carpet, every movement slow and deliberate. He moves like an old man, Sirius realizes, and wonders if he actually is one. "How long...?" he tries to ask.

"Six years," Remus says. "Or, well, five years and nine months."

Nine months, how terribly appropriate. "And Harry is...?"

"Alive, yes, and...as well as can be expected."

"And Voldemort?"

"Gone."

Sirius tops off his drink and toasts. "I'll drink to that."

"About four years too late."

Sirius thinks about it, but it is still all too overwhelming so he tosses back a deep swallow. God, that sour-tingle-burn, how can he have forgotten it? "And to Hermione," he says, topping off the glass again. "I should thank her."

"Send her chocolates," Remus says. "You gave her quite a fright this morning, you know."

She gave him quite a fright, too, but Sirius finds it hard to think uncharitable thoughts when she has just brought him (back) to life. Does this make her his mother, in some abstract sense? No, no, that is not a line of thinking to pursue. Sirius tops off his glass again.

Remus pulls the bottle out of his reach at that point—Sirius notes he is still nursing the first glass. Their fingers bump a bit while they both fumble for the bottle, and Sirius looks into Remus's eyes, wondering—something. If the jolt to his nerves and the pit of his stomach is the normal sort of thing, perhaps.

"Do you remember what it was like?" Remus asks into the pause.

"What what was like?"

"Being dead."

The warmth and ease leaks out of the room like a ruptured balloon. Sirius examines his glass, thinking for a moment, untangling the threads and snatching at words that are already evaporating. "I think...it was nice," he says haltingly. "James was there. Or a memory of James. And Lily. I think...I think it felt like being surrounded by memories, although I don't know if they were real memories. Maybe more like a dream."

(A dream of love and joy and warmth and light, a dream that didn't quite touch the skin because there wasn't any skin to touch. A fluid world of remembered feelings and imagined touches that were only echoes of life, pale but free from pain...a world where everything that could have been could be, if only with the brevity of a fantasy...)

"You were there," Sirius finds himself blurting. "It was...nice."

Remus' eyebrows shoot up, but his face doesn't change, even if he takes quite a while to respond. "I'm glad it was nice," he says finally. "I hoped it would be, after you died. I did miss you, but you'd been so..." _angry? depressed? insane? _"...shut away for so long. After a while, I thought that if death brought you any measure of peace, perhaps it had been a blessing for you, if not for those of us you left behind."

No, no, no. Sirius doesn't want to go down this road. He wants the banter back, the warmth, (the memory of Before). He finishes his drink and manages to snatch the bottle back from Remus, though somehow his limbs have begun to feel gluey and thick, losing the smooth strength of muscle, bone and nerve just when he is getting use to it again. "So you haven't been mourning my demise for the past—six years, is it?" he asks, forcing the sarcasm out with the last drops of brandy. "Some friend you've proved to be, Moony."

"We've really finished that?" asks Remus, and takes the empty bottle away easily. "There's another bottle, if you like."

"'Course I like. And you're avoiding my accusations of your unfaithful friendfulness."

"I'm sure that's not a word," says Remus with a weak smile, "and you're being too silly to deserve a response."

Remus hoists himself up with another chain of those careful moments, and disappears back to the kitchen; Sirius tries to watch him go, but it has suddenly become difficult to aim his eyes. _Drunk—_the word floats across his mind in a leisurely fashion, making passing connections to the state of his body. He is drunk. After only a few drinks? Well, he hasn't eaten anything all day...(and everything is new)...he lowers himself to the floor, catches his own reflection in a low glass-fronted cabinet, shuts his eyes. Not thinking about his face right now, what breathing means, how he's becomes so old. Not thinking of anything at all...

...and time slips...

...until a sharp poke in his ribs stirs him. "If you want to sleep," Remus says genially, "you're welcome to the bed."

Sirius struggles to his feet, wondering if he has always been such a lightweight, or if alcohol intolerance is simply a side effect of (being born) whatever it is Hermione did. He begins to stumble towards the first door he sees; Remus catches him and carefully turns him around, keeping a firm grip on one arm, steering him into a small neat bedroom with a bed that is narrowish and mussed. Not that Sirius particularly minds. He drops himself onto the deep old mattress the moment he is in range, and snuggles into the blankets—they are thick and soft, and smell like Remus, the sweaty stubbly skin-and-muscle Remus with the lingering musk of the wolf. The Remus who is sitting behind him, practically back-to-hip, warm and physical—blood, flesh, and bone.

Sirius lets his eyelids drop and settles into a warm doze, the alcohol rendering everything fuzzy and remote. Dreamlike. Deathlike. There is a sobering thought, though not in a literal since, because it doesn't do anything to sharpen his senses or unblur his mind. The memories from Before (Between?) are fading, as memories of dreams so often do, but he can still pick out the threads: the warmth, the peace, Remus' pleasant constancy. Remus was there, somehow, and Remus is here now, and Sirius suddenly wonders what will happen if he sleep—if he dreams—if he will know the difference.

Remus moves as if to get up, the warm solid weight vanishes and Sirius blindly, desperately, reaches out and snags an arm. "You're not leaving, Moony," he says as firmly as he can manage, digging his fingers into fuzzy wool and wristbones.

"Sirius?"

"If you leave, this stops seeming real."

The bedroom is dim, but even in the dimness Sirius can see Remus' face smooth out; he wonders if he just sounds that pathetic or if Remus feels somewhat the same. Either way, Remus doesn't leave, but stretches himself out on the narrow stripe of bed available to him with a bit of a sigh. "I'm right here," he says, patting Sirius' shoulder vaguely.

"Good," Sirius says, and after a moment, he rolls over to face him—it seems vaguely unfriendly to do otherwise. It also allows him to keep one hand on Remus' arm, an anchor to reality, (a lifeline).

They've lain like this before—no, Before—Between, in his blurry fantasies. Only fantasies, pale imitations of lost life, memories of things left unsaid. There were many things left unsaid, he recalls, apologies and offers and confessions—he was always too (frightened, threatened, ashamed) tongue-tied, and Remus never seemed to mind. There were words that had taken him years to say to himself, much less out loud, and that ragged Gryffindor courage took so long to gather before he felt he could say—

But he never said it, in the end.

(He was rather interrupted.)

Remus is breathing deep and even, and when Sirius opens his eyes he sees that Remus's are closed. Remus, who has always looked so old, now more than ever—he has laugh lines and frown lines and more gray in his hair than brown. He has always looked old, but Sirius never really saw it, willfully ignored it because he didn't want it to be true. (In his dreams Between Remus had always been young, and always been healthy, and only been the Wolf when it pleased him, and never in pain.) They are both old men now, Remus lined and gray, he himself ravaged and wasted. Both scarred. What a perfect match (_we are for eachother)—_

Remus opens his eyes drowsily, slowly, as if sensing the stare. "Padfoot?" he asks, sounding as tired as Sirius, if not more. Though suddenly Sirius doesn't feel all that tired anymore.

(He's had two chances; he cannot count on three.)

"If you hate me for saying this," Sirius says, very aware of how close they are lying, the shape of the words in his mouth, the newness of all things (and himself)—"I'm going to blame my saying it on being drunk, and you're going to have to forgive me. Promise?"

"Promise," Remus says, brows furrowed.

Sirius takes a deep breath, and finds he couldn't actually look Remus in the eye and say this—but the only other place to put his face is down, in the pillow, and by proximity the shoulder of Remus' fuzzy old cardigan. It smells like skin and musk and life. "I think that I'm mad for you," he says into Remus' neck where the blood flies through the veins with exquisite speed.

Remus doesn't sound angry when he says, "What?" but perhaps he is simply too surprised.

"I should've told you before," Sirius says quickly. "I actually meant to, but then I—well—died." He looks up, and he thinks he is braced for anything, rejection or angry or even quiet pity.

Remus laughs at him.

"You're not supposed to laugh," Sirius says, stung. "You're supposed to say—" _go to hell, get away from me, Oh Sirius I'm mad for you too—_ "something."

Remus swipes at his face—there are tears in his eyes—and grins at Sirius. "Sorry."

"I was planning to tell you."

"Six years ago?"

"Doesn't feel that long to me."

Sirius thinks he should roll away now, words said, shame accepted. Remus shakes his head and rubs his eyes again, sitting up a little bit further in the blankets—and then to Sirius' surprise he throws an arm around his shoulders and pulls him closer, close enough to bump foreheads. Sirius grabs hold of Remus' arms again, not certain where this is going, ready to either pull or push, depending.

"Did you know," Remus says with a sudden husk to his voice, "I've wanted to shag you since we were fifteen?"

Sirius waits for the punch line. Remus' face is earnest—not calm, not shielded with sarcasm and humor, and anyway this isn't his style of joke. He licks his lips (they're awfully close together). "You never said..."

"I didn't know what to say when I was fifteen," Remus says. "And then, after school, I hardly knew what was safe to say to you. Then Azkaban, and I was glad I never said anything. And when you came back, it was such a mess, and there were so many more important things going on. And then you died."

Sirius tightens his grip on Remus's arms, feeling the flesh and blood and bone beneath the wool, the ache in his own knuckles from the pressure, the tiny pulse struggling under his thumb. He breathes in the smell of blankets and wool and Remus and brandy and rain, listens to the rain that's absolutely pounding down on the windows now, breathes out. "I'm back now," he says.

Remus says, "Indeed."

And Remus kisses him, abrupt and firm, chaste and warm, and this is new to him—the taste and touch and smell of Remus moving, moving, a soft wet velvety slide (tongues), a sharp musky bittersweet richness under the brandy sting. This is new because it is real, no fantasy, no graven image. He throws himself into the kiss, on top of Remus, savoring the touch and taste and smells and sound of it all, and when Remus starts to laugh again Sirius laughs with him, enchanted by the way his breastbone buzzes as if their two voices are one.

(And for a moment the world is perfect.)


End file.
